1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to semiconductor memory devices, and more specifically to non-volatile memories that can be irreversibly programmed electrically.
2. Description of Related Art
The present invention can advantageously, but non-limitingly, be applied to the “repair” of a dynamic random access memory (DRAM). Specifically, DRAM memories generally include a memory plane together with columns and rows of redundant memory cells which can be incorporated into the memory plane, so as to replace defective columns or rows, by using memory cells having a configuration of the type which can be irreversibly programmed electrically just once.
The article by Jae-Kyung et al. entitled “An Antifuse EPROM Circuitry Scheme for Field-Programmable Repair in DRAM” (IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, Vol. 35, No. 10, October 2000) describes such an exemplary application. More specifically, in this article, individual blocks, each one having a cell which can be irreversibly programmed electrically and made up of a capacitor and an access transistor, are connected to redundant rows and columns of the memory plane.
As a consequence, such a structure has the drawback of requiring the production on silicon of several independent blocks, the number of which increases as the size of the DRAM memory increases.